An Irishman's Diary

How heartening to see Catherine McGuinness unveiling the Irish Human Rights Commission's proposals for a constitutional amendment…

How heartening to see Catherine McGuinness unveiling the Irish Human Rights Commission's proposals for a constitutional amendment to outlaw direct and indirect discrimination.

The grounds it cites are - deep breath - gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief, membership of the Travelling community, language, political opinion, property, birth or political status. Phew.

Now. The next question: is there a single category which I do not find reason to object to? Let's start with gender. Should men be allowed to be full midwives, without chaperones? Should the Ranger Wing of the Army accept applications from women? Answers on one side of the paper, please.

Next, race. A Nigerian is opening an ethnic Nigerian restaurant in Dublin. What do you want the staff to be - Lithuanian, Russian, Irish, Chinese? Or would you prefer that they are Yoruba, Ibo or Hausa-Fulani? And when you go to a Japanese restaurant, wouldn't you prefer to be waited on by a Japanese waiter - or "wait-person" as the politically cretinous expression now goes? You would? You racist!

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Category number three: age. Yes indeed: so we can all claim pensions whenever we want, and children can drive and vote and enter medical school and perform heart transplants, and the Army - yes, my friends again - has to consider applications from infants and nonagenarians.

Colour comes next. All right, in the absence of sufficient number of Nigerians in our Nigerian restaurant, who do you want to wait on you: Conor or Emma from Sandycove, or a Ghanaian or Kenyan who will at least look the part?

Disability. Hello, and here comes the Army again. And An Garda Síochána. And the fire brigades, and ambulance services, and buses, and airlines, because you can't have one-legged soldiers or police officers or bus-drivers or in-flight attendants who have to deal with emergencies.

Sexual orientation. A good one. After all, we have thousands of paederasts in Ireland; with their vigorous interest in children, we should certainly open the gates for them in their preferred careers as teachers, paediatricians, youth workers, scout masters and Montessori-minders.

Religious belief. Ah, so the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin is appointing a head teacher to one of its schools and so must consider applications from Tibetan Buddhists, Iraqi Muslims, New York Jews, East Belfast Free Presbyterians and English Mormons? A thoroughly sound idea.

Membership of the Travelling community. What is that, please? Where does the legally binding definition exist, as opposed to the working one used by councils? Does the term apply to New Age Travellers? And what about Touregs? And if the wife kicks me out of my home, how long do I have to be on the road before I too qualify as a Traveller?

Next, language. In which case, bang goes all those Gaeltacht grants for Irish-speakers, and bang goes Conradh na Gaeilge and Údarás and Comhaltas giving jobs to Irish speakers, and bang goes the entire language policy - and good riddance too. And so we have an air traffic controller who, in fluent Swahili, is guiding the jumbos one by one into Carrantouhil, boom boom boom, and a Korean-speaking hospital consultant who is performing a hysterectomy on a woman who only came in to clean the office.

Ah, and here comes the lawyer to take my complaint for discrimination after my application to become a shower attendant in Alex senior girls' school was turned down, and I see that you are both blind and deaf, and you speak what? I'm sorry, I can't make that out: can anyone translate? What? Commanche only, eh? Excellent! Now all we need is to choose a Commanche judge and a Commanche jury - except, of course, that would be illegal.

Now we have political opinion - and who can fault that? Which is why my Eskimo solicitor is suing Sinn Féin after it turned down my application to be general secretary: apparently there are a few trifling differences between us. But trifling or otherwise, these are no grounds for me to be excluded from working with the Shinners.

In the final stretch now, we have property: quite right too. It is outrageous that Tony Ryan, Tony O'Reilly and Michael O'Leary are not on the Dublin Corporation housing list. Something Must be Done.

Coming up to the finishing tape, and next we have birth: from which I can only conclude that the IHRC is adamant that the unborn must have equal rights with the born. Thus we shall have all those little foetuses square-bashing in the Curragh, sitting on extra tall cushions in the driver's seat of the Luas tram, and presenting, in fluent foetus, my court case against Holy Child Killiney for its refusal to admit me as a pupil into its third form.

Getting closer now, and the final one is "or other status". Which in effect means anything. You can't act? In other words, you are an unactor. Then good news! The Abbey has to take you. You've got a voice like a toad being wound rear feet first through a mangle? Irrelevant: you're singing in Wexford Festival Opera. You can't write? Here, have a job writing An Irishman's Diary.

So here we are again, back to using the Constitution as an expression of our national piety. Once upon a time we had meaningless, lofty aspirations of Catholicism, and others about the unity of the island. These were followed by a ban on abortion, which ended up having precisely the opposite effect to that intended. Nearly 20 years on, and we apparently still haven't learned anything. So let's have one final referendum: a constitutional referendum outlawing all further referendums.